Panic! (but the disco's closed)

I've been thinking, recently.  And I think the media, as a whole, should be burned at the stake.  This panic is entirely, and without exception, their fault. 

Everybody panicking?  Either believes every bit of info being pushed, spread, exaggerated, and disseminated by the media...or believes nothing of it, and there's so much media shit that they can't find* real information.  Or the statistics that they can find are in news stories, and they can't trust that those haven't been twisted (they have). 

And social media isn't helping, for the most part.  I mean, the groups I'm a member of are mostly really smart, and have inroads in finding the information (and experience in interpreting it) that a lot of other groups lack, but they're not able to get that information out there in a wide enough spread.  And then again, when they try, other individuals often accuse them of "drinking the kool-aid."  Because the raw data contradicts what the media's been pushing.  Hell, it contradicts the computer projections some of the so-called experts** have been citing.

It's also, for the USA, contradicting what's happened in China, North Korea, and Italy.  I've got theories on that, and on why Japan hasn't been hit so hard (nor has South Korea, really).  And no, my theories have nothing to do with race, like I've been hearing people accuse others of.  It's culture.  It's nutrition levels.  It's the overall percentage of the population that smokes.  It's the overall percentage of the population that vaccinates.

The cited and projected death rates aren't real.  The media, while not making it up out of whole cloth, are pushing an unrealistic projection, and really screaming the stories of the people who'd had it bad enough they almost died, could have died, or did die*** while hushing the numbers who've recovered, or had been barely symptomatic.  And downplaying how few of us have been tested in the first place.  



*Half the ones that find the raw data and statistics--which, admittedly, isn't easy, and a lot of it may be behind academic or other paywalls--can't make sense of them.  So, I suppose, education can also be blamed for part of the panic.  

**You know what we call "experts" that believe computer modeling over real-world data? The kind that massage the data to fit the computer models, and actively engage in sample bias?  Frauds.   

***I've heard of several younger people who've died.  Previously counted healthy, but potentially with things that often start in middle age and gone undiagnosed, or health workers who've likely depressed their own immune systems through the exhaustion of caring for others.  

Home school

I am now a homeschool mom, for at least the next week and a half.  We shall see if the idiots in charge decide to allow schools to open back up or if they decide to close for the rest of the year.  And if school will start up as normal next fall. 

If things stay in the shitter, I may simply buy the Abeka curriculum and do the job myself.  $800 (two years' worth of curriculum, when I last checked) is much less of a hit on the family budget than tuition. 

The school had middle and high school pick up their packets yesterday; today was the elementary school's turn.  K-2 was on the north side parking lot for pick up (where that bunch gets picked up by parents anyway), and 3-5 was on the south east side (again, normal pick-up spots).  We drove through the regular pick up line, and the teachers talked to the parents and ran the packets out...and talked to the kids.  The Spanish teacher, librarian, and art teachers were there, waving and hollering at the kids, too. 

I think this may be harder on the teachers--it's a really small school, and all of the teachers are really attached to all of the kids--than it is on the kids.  Or the parents, really. 

Honestly, this isn't something I expected to be able to do, ever.  Take the imp: he's going to school because he would hide and try to learn things for himself instead of letting me help him, or teach him.  He still does that, to an extent.  The pixie is such a social butterfly that NEEDS people around that she wilts on her own.  It's not as pronounced now as it was when she was a toddler, but it's still there.

I have a list of assignments per day for each kid.  The imp's started today, the pixie's starts tomorrow.  The imp was done for the day, within thirty minutes of actually working on stuff.  Too bad it wasn't all at once...we'll see how quickly the pixie does hers tomorrow (I'll be doing hers with her, first).

Today was really hard for the imp, though--he wound up forgetting to take his pill this morning, and forgetting that he hadn't taken it until it was way too late.  I wound up letting him do his history by doing the reading, then typing the answers to the chapter check comprehension questions assigned for the day's work.  And then booted him out for a while before starting math.  And booting him out between pages of math.  But he did get done, and it really did only take him a half an hour of focused work to do.  He just...couldn't focus. 

Tomorrow will be better.  Tomorrow, I'm getting up earlier, and I'm going to make sure he takes his focus pill, and that he eats enough.  Tomorrow, he goes outside and runs around until the pixie's done with her work, to help burn off some of his energy.  Tomorrow, we go onto a modified school routine. 

He does so much better with routines.  So does the pixie, but to a lesser extent. 

That didn't take long

My son, the engineer/designer/electrician/architect. 

Last week, when I felt able to do anything at all, I started in on the imp's room.  Fifteen minutes at a time, by the timer.  We got half done with his entire room in two days, with two fifteen minute sessions at a time. 

Until Saturday.  Saturday, I let him off the hook for the morning session: Odysseus was building things, and the imp was helping.  They got a bookcase made for the entry way--it's a four-foot square, with four shelves.  Holds a LOT of books. 

And then, I went in for the afternoon session.  And the little shit got mouthy. 

My temper is already short.  I'd already had them home for a week, and I've got two more weeks to go.  So I turned and left to get my thoughts together, and not react immediately.  I do not ever react or punish from anger.  I try not to "punish" at all, just add consequences. 

What I ended up doing was going back in his room, closing the door, telling the pixie when she poked her head in that no, she wasn't allowed to help...then making him help me finish the job. 

Friday evening, I'd pulled an entire bag full of trash out of his room.  One of the big, black yard bags.  Saturday, we filled another half a bag.  But we did finish in another hour and a half what we'd started. 

We also rearranged his room a bit--his Hot Wheels Mega-City track is now in the corner of his room, his tackle-boxes of travel-Hot Wheels kits are stacked behind it instead of taking up room in his toy box, and the secondary toy box full of wood blocks (that he uses to prop ramps to the angle he wants them to be) and extra track is pushed over by the rest of the related stuff.

We put a small, plastic drawer cart in his room with a desk, too.  Two Christmases ago, we got him a snap-together circuits kit.  He'd lost parts of it (most of it is now found, and in the top drawer of said cart). 

Today, I've been hearing whistles and other noises made by that set.  He'd also built marble runs designed to drop marbles back into the drawer he's designated for them. 

I'm glad it's had this effect.  I just wish I hadn't pushed myself into a ME/CFS attack in the process.

Musings on the fucking stupidity...

China.  China is the fucking villain of the piece.  Set aside the conspiracy theories that they manufactured the virus (really?  Really??  It's a terrible weapon--not even that good at thinning the elderly from the population).  They are still the villain.  First, they lied, lied again, executed doctors that wanted to spread the word, and lied some more.  Then they panicked.  Which...well.  Humans have about as much sense as horses: they stampede really easily if something spooks one or two of them.  No overreaction means no panic.  Third, trying to blame the mess on us?  Pooh bear, you started it. 

This ignores the whole theory put forth that most plagues start there, just...unacknowledged. I read, several years ago, that the Black Death and a few other nasty, Middle Age plagues, started on the far Eastern end of trade routes.

Overreactions here: we are murdering our nation's productivity and the livelihood of our middle class.  There are some states that are now saying that all non-essential (and THEY determine that) businesses must totally shut down for...now, and for an as-yet-to-be-determined length of time.  Banning restaurants from serving meals in their dining rooms.  Banning bars.  Banning any gathering of 10 or more people (Missouri has joined that bandwagon as of today).  Fiddling with elections.

Want to hear what's been cited as a bigger danger, but isn't banned?  Public transit systems.  Government offices.  Court houses.  Welfare offices.

You know.  The darlings of the ones pushing communism.

A funny thought hit me, today.  We tried to get our family grocery shopping done.  Went to Sam's Club--that was a huge NOPE.  There was a line stretching from the door, around the corner of the store, down the side past the automotive department, and across the back of the side parking lot.  In the rain.  In sub-40 degree weather.  At 9 in the morning.

Normally, when I hit Sam's Club at 9:00, I have the store practically to myself.  Usually, they're not open to their general membership until 10:00--I pay the premium membership to get in early and shop in less-crowded conditions.

For the time being, Sam's Club has suspended the Advantage membership hours.  They open at 9:00 for everybody.  I mean, getting the store clean is one of their concerns.  Restocked is another.  But.  They handled this wrong. 

So far as I can see, the "reduced store hours," while touted as a way to get the stores cleaned and shelves restocked before the locusts, looters, and panic-buyers descend again, is doing nothing other than propagating and compounding the panic-buying.

Sam's Club is OUT of Cascade.  Not the neat little packets, the basic gel.  Walmart had NO spray bottles of any type.

This is really fucking pissing me off.  Yes, I'm worried about MY mom, and MY sister, and MY mother-in-law.  No, I don't want to see this mutate into something worse.*

However, it isn't Covid-19 I'm scared of.

I'm scared of the power granted to the malevolence of the state by mush-minded, panicking lemmings.

But I insult lemmings.  Real lemmings are nowhere near this stupid. 

*Viruses typically DON'T mutate into worse; they don't want to kill the host--that kills the virus before it can spread.

Three weeks.

Jasper County schools have been encouraged to stay closed until the first full week of April.  For us, that makes a massive reduction in our food budget (a good portion goes to the school to pay for school lunches).  For others, it's a cut in their income (assuming they're being allowed to work, and not laid off because their job has shut down).  For single, working parents, it's an utter nightmare. 

For most two parent households...it's a massive hardship.  Because of the weird insistence that everyone must have a degree, and that everyone must carry debt, many families must have both parents working.  Some of these individuals have one or both of them encouraged to work remotely.  Not all of them.  And there are hardships involved with either option. 

Let's look at the families that are working from home for the time being.  Most of them are asked to do so during normal business hours...which happen to be when kids are most awake and active.  And bored shitless, because Mom and Dad are busy, and aren't available to make sure every waking hour is so full that they don't have time to slow down and just think.  And they pester.  Makes it awfully hard to work from home, when the kids are home with you.*  And that's assuming there's only one kid: more than one, and they can entertain themselves and each other, but that can really easily turn into fighting. 

These families may not be prepared to hunker down and actually have three meals a day, every day, at home, either.  Whether that preparation is a full enough larder, enough time to cook, or the prior planning to make sure they're not left standing in front of the fridge wondering what to cook.  And that's ignoring the distraction of the kids pestering them while they're trying to think.  More on this later--I have suggestions. 

First: think about what your family likes eating, and write down meals on sticky-notes.  Pop them up on a calendar, then move them down a couple of weeks after you've made them.  Get the kids involved in cooking and teach them as you go.  They're less bored, and less inclined to pester, and a lot of kids enjoy Mom or Dad teaching them to cook.  And meal planning--having a rough idea of what you're going to fix and when--removes a lot of stress.

Second: set up routines.  Kids are scared, too, and often have a hard time actually recognizing and articulating it.  Routines help them by reminding them that things aren't completely broken. Routines help kids behave better. 

Third: set boundaries.  And enforce them.  Give them fifteen minutes--a set fifteen minutes--every hour where they can pester you during work hours, but put them in time out for pestering you for something that isn't an emergency (the cat puking isn't an emergency; the toilet puking is) while you're working instead of taking a short break.  And DON'T let them pester you while you're on a bathroom break, if they're older than kindergarten age. 

No, these solutions won't work for everyone, but it's a place to start while families figure out what works for them. 

Then there's the "essential personnel" who are still working outside the home: which of them stays home with the sprogs?  How do they choose?  And yes, it will more than likely come to that because daycares are closed, too, and many live way too far away from the grandparents to be able to rely on that help.**

It's hard enough for people who work outside the home to plan for a full week of Spring Break.  What are they supposed to do for three (or more), especially with their usual go-to solutions are shut down, too?  Maybe, with some of the different companies, there can be some flexibility with shifts.

The solution's not so simple for these families.  Nor is it simple for the families who've been laid off and don't have money coming in anymore. 

If you've got people in your neighborhood with kids, and if the parents aren't appearing to be working outside the home, check on them.  If they're not working at all, help them a bit.  Maybe raid your pantries to help them stretch their own. 

It is, after all, what I'm planning to do, if I see a need. 

*Speaking from experience, here.  I've got two, and I can't do much actual brain work while either the pixie or both of them are home.  The imp's a lot easier, because he does like to go in his room and play quietly by himself, or play on his Kindle, or read, or watch TV.  He's learned that if he pesters me, he gets assigned chores to keep him busy.  The pixie, on the other hand is very social, and likes chores.  

**And that's ignoring the fact that the current viral plague we're trying to head off is more likely to harm the grandparents than the kids or the parents, and should NOT be encouraged to babysit. 

Spring Break

The kids are out, this week.  But it was scheduled, and expected.  There's no word on whether their school will open back up afterwards.  Lots of the local schools have announced that they are staying closed and doing distance learning work until...April. 

I feel sorry for the parents that planned for one week, and don't have the flexibility that we have to absorb more with nothing more than frustration with the fighting.*  Lots of folks depend on schools to babysit their sprogs because both of the parents work.  Lots of people are being told to work from home, yes, but many of those are not going to know what to do with the kids that are stuck home with them.  Most kids, if given room and no distractions, can get through an entire week's worth of worksheets and packets in a couple of days--yes, school is slowed down that much by the idea of putting all ability levels of the same age into the same classroom. 

My oldest is spending a couple of nights with his grandma.  My youngest--my clingy, social little girl-child--is home with just me.  So far, we've straightened the entryway (she mopped it with the swiffer mop first--yes, out of order, but it's done); washed her laundry, gotten other laundry sorted to be put away; gotten yet more laundry gathered up to be washed once hers is transferred to the dryer (last load for the day, with a load scheduled for tomorrow, and another one on Wednesday), gotten the dishwasher run, and unloaded; the microwave wiped down on the outside; and some schmutz on the floor soaked down with Windex.**

Why, yes, I'm already pooped and peopled out.  Thanks for noticing.  SHE ISN'T.  AND she's bored and lonely. 

If the kids are out for longer than planned, I will keep them busy.  I have a lot of stuff that's been put off because I've not felt up to doing it that I can use to keep them busy and too mad at me making them do stuff to fight with each other.  

Not to mention, part of what I'm trying to get done is in their best interest: I'm going to make them help me clear out part of the garage to set up for them to use as an art area, so that the art supplies are no longer making a horrendous mess out of my house.

 Right now, though, I'm still working from my Spring Break plans.  Right now, there's no word from their school about extended time away.  Great for mom the introvert, great for my extrovert little pixie.*** 


*And there will be fighting, because our weather this week is terrible, and it's SW MO: next couple of weeks could be awful, great, or disastrous, weather-wise.  Or a mix of all of the above.  

**Schmutz is too dried to clean up without soaking, couldn't find any floor stuff, but like the FlyLady says, "Soap is soap."  

***Eventually, I'm going to have to come up with something different to call her.  The top of the child's head comes up to the bridge of my nose.  

Good GOD, people are dumb.

I went to Sam's Club this morning.  Dropped the kids at school (last day before their Spring Break) and went straight there.  My sister had asked me to get her a mega-pack of TP since they'd just opened their last package.* 

There are no paper products left, except for those used in the dispensers--there were a few boxes of the dispenser-rolls of paper towels and some of the tri-fold ones.  No toilet paper.  No paper towels.  No Kleenex, no "facial tissue."  Nothing. 

I went back to the pharmacy section for toothbrushes...and there's plenty of bar soap left (Dial brand), but not a lot of pump soap (and what's there is limited to two per customer, now), and no hand sanitizer at all. 

I have NEVER seen Sam's Club picked that bare. 

Here's the funny thing:

Their food was fully stocked.  Soups, Ramen, canned veggies, pasta--all fully stocked.  The peanut butter was lower than usual, but that goes in cycles.  I had no issue re-stocking the household Nutella supplies.  Plenty of ground beef.  The rice was low, and so were the dried beans.**  But the easy to fix stuff that's really all you want when you feel awful?  Yeah, all there.  In massive quantity. 

Locally, there's one tested-positive Corona virus case.  She's in the next big town/small city over east of us (about an hour away), twenty years old, a college student, and newly back from a trip to Austria.  Next closest case is in St. Louis--5 or 6 hours from here on the interstate.

The university's closed, starting the Monday following Spring Break.  All classes are transitioning to online-only for at least the month of April, if not all the way through the end of the semester (there's one week left, plus finals week, after the end of April).  The state capitol is closed to tours (which we'd been planning to do next Friday).  These strike me as sensible precautions, really.  The ones most likely to bring in the Corona virus are stupid college kids catching it over Spring Break; the ones most likely to be in danger from it are our politicians, given the average age of said politicians.

But for fuck's sake, one 45-roll package of toilet paper lasts my family of four six months.  One 15-roll package of paper towels lasts, again, about six months.***  Why are people buying three or four packages of these supplies from Sam's Club, leaving the bars of soap, and not stocking up on food?  Say we do need to self-quarantine to prevent the spread of this mess.  Say it does last longer than flu season.  What the hell are these idiots going to eat?  

I'm pretty sure it won't be toilet paper, soft-soap, or paper towels. 



*The Sam's Club brand of TP, Member's Mark, is comparable in quality to the Charmin.  And there's 45 rolls in the mega-pack--5 packages of 9 rolls.  One pack usually lasts a while, but...it's never wise to not buy a new pack when you've opened your last one.  

**No toilet paper or paper towels, rice and beans low...these idiots are buying out what they think they should be getting, or what they've been told they should be getting, and leaving the things that they actually need to be getting.  And I'd be willing to bet they've got no clue how to actually cook those dried beans and rice.   


***I'm going to have to cut up some old shirts for basic cleaning rags, though.  I'm down to my last two rolls of paper towels, and those get used in heating breakfasts.  

Fucking DST

For states that follow Daylight Savings Time* (which made sense with fuel rationing of wartime, but doesn't now), the "spring forward" of an hour was from 2:00 to 3:00 am yesterday.  I'd gotten most of the clocks reset before I went to bed on Saturday. 

Yesterday was bright, sunny, and gorgeous...but windy enough to set a lot of areas under a burn ban, even with super-saturated vegetation and soil.  And I still felt draggy and awful.  The kids weren't that happy, either.  And nobody felt like staying up, and nobody could get to sleep early enough last night. 

Even worse, Day 2 of DST is dark, cool, and rainy.  I'm on my second 16 oz cup of coffee, and may end up drinking the whole pot before lunch.

After I finish this cup, I may have to go back out.  I pulled up my calendar and to-do list for the day (zone 2: kitchen, by the way, for housework), and realized that I forgot that I need to go get my blood drawn for the frequent thyroid testing the endocrinologist wants.  Thankfully, she's backed off to every three months instead of every six weeks.  But this week is it.  I may put it off until later in the week, when it's (hopefully) not raining.  I think this soggy mess is supposed to clear off tomorrow...Thursday morning's supposed to be clearer, too.  And I'm likely to feel more alert and with it later in the week for dealing with traffic.

I think I will put that off.

In the meantime, I've also got a fuck-ton of housework to do today.  I didn't get much done yesterday, and I want as much as possible done before Wednesday.  I'll be making stuffed pepper soup for dinner and having my mother in law over.

But today...yeah, today sucks.  I can't think straight, and the rain and wind is miserable enough it's even driven the dog inside.  Hell, she didn't want to go out when she was put out this morning.  She wasn't any more ready to get up than the rest of us were.

In all honesty, though, I do like the extra daylight at the end of the day.  I just hate switching the times around.  I'd be a lot happier if they just...left it like this.  Instead of stealing an hour of sleep every spring.

Fucking "spring forward," my ass.  More like "fall face forward because some government fucker decided my money wasn't enough for them to steal."

*Why the fuck, if they were going to move the time change from April to March, and move the change back from October to November, do they still call the other way "standard time?"

Trending up...

Our weather's warming again.  It's kind of early, but not by a lot, and I don't mind that much.  Last year was...really late. 

One thing it's not is dry.  Not even trending dry.  Maybe a little dryer than last year, but that's because it's not been raining absolute buckets every time it rains. 

(Local farmers might want to look into planting rice in low-lying river bottom fields...they're wet enough for it!)

This bodes ill for the Corona virus mess.  Typically, Americans get sick in the wintertime.  We're crammed together indoors, getting less sun (i.e. vitamin D--the immune system booster), and many are further compromised by other illnesses (colds) or depression.* 

That said, spring is on the way; amounts of sunshine are climbing, and people are starting to come outside and clean up their yards from winter dropping dead branches all over the place while it was too cold to go pick them all up.  And people are spending less time going out and shoe-horning into stores or movie theaters because they're bored, and it's too cold to go out and do what they'd rather be doing (whatever that is, from sports, to just sitting out in the sun with a good book). 

To be honest, I wasn't that concerned about it to start with, for several reasons.  Yeah, a few thousand people in China have died from it...out of more than a billion people total (I think China's estimated population is 1.7 billion). 

And it's...China.  Their sanitation is...lacking.  And they don't bother washing their hands (not sure if they're provided soap and paper towels in public restrooms, even.  Or toilet paper.).  And they don't give a rat's ass about air quality.  And the majority of them smoke like chimneys.  And they cram themselves together like cattle, even when they're not in public transit.** 

Americans are...different.  We're germ-phobes to the point that the rest of the world mocks us.  We don't like being around people with body odor, because we assume (rightly or wrongly) that they're dirty, and further assume that that could affect our own health.  We don't like being crammed in tight with people, don't like others breathing on us.  We have the largest personal space bubble in the world...and this virus is spread through coughing on each other, sneezing on each other, and wiping germ-y hands on each other.  Which we just...don't do, once we're out of Kindergarten. 

But, as the weather trends warmer, days lengthen, and flu season ends, I think the risks of the current panic du jour will mitigate, fade, and eventually disappear, just like bird flu, swine flu, ebola fears, zika, and all the other virus panics did.  

*Depression--whether seasonal affective or chronic--buggers your immune system all to hell, at about the same level it's doing your emotional state and brain chemistry.  

**The Chinese do not share America's preference for a large personal space bubble.  I don't think there's another country in the world that has as large of a demanded social buffer between individuals.  

Hey, neat!

So, the doc's been concerned about my blood pressure enough to prescribe two different things, now.  Neither worked well (as in, there was maybe a 5 pt bp drop, maximum--when I needed a 20 pt drop), and both had...side effects.  The first one was a diuretic, and pushed my already-low blood sodium into concerning ranges, even with me increasing my salt intake.  The second was a calcium channel blocker that caused a headache that acted like a migraine, but didn't respond to any of my usual anti-migraine tricks until the bp med wore off. 

I got the celery seed extract in the mail last Friday, and started taking it Sunday after I started feeling better--75mg 2x per day.  I researched it hard, looking at side effects (none listed), and drug interactions (interacts with levothyroxine by reducing what the body can absorb/use, but everything does, so I take it no closer than 4 hours after I take my thyroid meds). 

And my blood pressure did what I wanted it to.  It went down.  Significantly.  I had a follow-up doctor's appointment on Tuesday, and my blood pressure was smack-dab in the normal range.  Even with the frustration of having to have the appointment in the first place--I'd been called back because the doc hadn't paid attention to my chart and/or forgot and/or missed something.  And then the doc didn't bother to show at the appointment.  The NP that showed up to deal with me forty minutes into the appointment was quite nice, and I don't have to go back. 

So far, I'm not noticing any side effects.  Not even the threatened muscle cramps that the diuretic caused. 

I'm also back to taking the turmeric/curcumin (500 mg 3x per day for the rest of the week) and fish oil (1x per day--really high levels of DHA/ARA per capsule, and also includes 2000 IU of D3).  Standard, daily pain levels caused by inflammation are tolerable, at this point.  I can close my hands all the way, instead of having the joints where my index (and now middle) finger meets my palm freeze up.  My major, weight bearing joints are working better, too, and putting up with my yoga routine well enough that I was able to double my reps (2 reps of 12 flowing poses, 2x per day).  My joints feel a lot more stable, and hurt less.  And my energy levels aren't particularly impacted by the yoga. 

My balance is still off, but I'm still congested from last week's bout with the flu.  And it always hits me in the ears, really bad.  As in, my ears are so congested that my hearing is affected, and my balance is just...wonky, at best. 

Funny thing...I'd been trying to achieve several things for several years--lower pain levels, higher energy levels, feeling human.  I'd tried generic levothyroixine, Tirosint (which worked a lot better than the cheap tablets), Aleve, aspirin, Anacin (worked better, but could only take it in the mornings), Meloxicam (worked wonders, but couldn't take it often).  None of the above really helped significantly, or for as long as they should have.  Like they do for most people.

Currently, I'm taking NP Thyroid (desiccated porcine thyroid gland), turmeric/curcumin, fish oil, and now celery seed extract...and things are starting to turn around.  All of these things are fully natural, and unlike the pharmaceuticals listed above, they're working. 

My body is seriously weird. 

Feeling flattened

I'm pretty sure that the flu has marched through our house with great big, stompy feet.  First the imp (as I said--but he recovered really damn quick), then Odyssues (he took longer, and still isn't feeling fully recovered), then me.  And wow, did it kick my ass.  No, I'm still not recovered, but I am better. 

Odysseus went to work all week last week.  I...couldn't really get out of bed after Tuesday.  And I fought a holding action against the mess, trying to let the fever do its thing, without letting it go too high (as in: trying to avoid taking Tylenol unless it went over 104.5...which it did a couple times).  And the imp's broke in about 3 days...Odysseus's took about 3.5 days.  Mine hit Monday, and it didn't break until yesterday (Saturday) morning, early.  And kept going higher than either of theirs did. 

I do feel better.  I don't feel like my entire body's been sandblasted anymore.  Nor do I feel like somebody took a baseball bat to my back from shoulders to hips.  No, now, I just feel like a cooked noodle: utterly limp and weak and shaky. 

But I am over it, and on the bright side, it took 8 lbs off of me. 

I'm glad it's done.  I've just got to focus, now, on getting back into working order.  Because I've got stuff to do this week, starting with paying enrollment fees to the kids' school and paying into their lunch accounts, continuing on through a followup with the idiot cardiologist that forgot or missed something in my chart on Tuesday, and finishing up with trying to get caught back up with the house for the rest of the week.  There's not as much as there could be--the pixie spent Friday bored and cleaning her room and the kitchen. 

I'll get there. 

I did get some confirmation of a few things last week: I couldn't take the things I'd been taking in place of NSAIDs--the turmeric, and the fish oil caplets--because the flu came with sinus drainage-induced queasiness.  Before that, I'd noticed that I'd been moving easier, and that my pain levels had dropped in the week I'd been taking them.  Well, I had to go back on them yesterday because my resting pain levels had climbed again.  Yes, the difference was noticeable--I'd gone from a 4-5 in resting pain levels down to a 3 or so, and I was able to close my hands all the way, even on bad days.  I'm back to a 4-5 without them for less than a week. 

I also found, last Monday, that I can't take the second blood pressure med the doc tried putting me on.  It gave me a nasty headache that acted like a migraine in some respects, but that none of my tactics for reducing migraine pain worked for.  NOTHING helped. 

So I did some further research, and found out that celery seed extract might--might--do some good as a hypertension remedy.  But that it also will help with some of my other issues--the inflammation, for one, and some that the oral contraceptives had been handling for me for the major thing--so I ordered some.  We'll see if it does anything for me.  I can already tell that I'm not having any side effects from it. 

But yeah.  Right now, I'm trying to not worry about it.  I may be up and in the living room for the first time since Tuesday, but I'm still feeling beat flat.  Recovery is, I can tell, going to be slow.

Oh...ffs, can't I catch a break?

Last week.  Monday.  The imp came home from school, and crawled in my lap--which is unusual for him.  I noted he was warm, and grabbed the thermometer to check.  Sure enough, he had a fever.  And complained about being achy.  He was quiet all day Tuesday, and was feeling a little better Wednesday.  Thursday, the fever came and went.  So he was out of school all week last week.  I'm thankful that a couple of those days were snow days. 

Thursday, Odysseus caught it.  And was bad enough he called in sick Friday, and didn't really get out of bed at all.  Nor Saturday, much.  Sunday was better, but still not good.  He was able to go back to work Monday.

I started coming down with it Monday.  And it was really bad yesterday, and has been worse today. 

And this is following on the heels of a ME/CFS attack. 

ARGH!

The blood pressure 'scrip raised my cholesterol.  And dropped my sodium levels from barely below normal to reason for concern, despite me eating more sodium. 

So.  That's that.  I'm off of that one.  I've got the rest of the month before I go see the doctor again. 

I've been doing research into cholesterol.  I'd read, like two years ago, that blood cholesterol was only barely affected by what you eat (like, 15% of your total number).  I've also read, more recently, that there isn't the link between cholesterol and heart disease that the researchers originally thought there was, and that statins are only really beneficial if one has already had a minor heart attack--they definitely do prevent another. 

The other thing I'd read is about the prevalence of side effects.  And the potential for those side effects to cause cognitive degeneration, or personality changes, or psychological problems. 

And then, I started looking into what cholesterol is, and why it might be elevated...and I think I know what's going on. 

Your body uses cholesterol as a healing building block.  Higher levels of inflammation (joints, injuries, cellular/mitochondrial issues) trigger the body into making more cholesterol to help heal the issue.  Cholesterol is also used by the brain as both nutrients, and re-building damaged/aged cells in the brain.  People with TBI would, I'd imagine, have higher cholesterol than if they didn't have a TBI. 

Guess what?  I have high levels of inflammation.  I have had high levels of inflammation (both ankles, both knees, both hips, and in some joints in both hands) for several years.  And up until Christmas, I was taking oral contraceptives (which raise both blood pressure and cholesterol), and a ton of anti-inflammatory drugs.  Since Christmas, I've dropped the artificial estrogen, and dropped the aspirin (GERD--caused by too much of it). 

I am seriously irritated with the medical profession, at the moment.  They're freaking out over the symptom without a thought wasted toward looking for the cause (chronic systemic inflammation), much less treating it. 

So, like with the Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome...I'm looking into what I can do to treat it.  Hopefully without exacerbating the GERD. 

So far, it looks like my options are NSAIDS (not so good--remember the GERD), an anti-inflammatory diet (already on what works for me), losing weight (trying--should be easier without the birth control, since it put fifteen pounds on me just by itself), and exercise (that one's really tough with the ME/CFS).  Or turmeric, but the jury (read: FDA) is out on whether that actually works or not. 

My experience says it does, and research says it could help with GERD healing.  So, I've started in on turmeric/curcumin at 1500 mg/day for a week to build it up in my system, then backing off to 500 mg/day.  I do know that it does make it easier to move--as in, my joints aren't so stiff--when I have it built up.  Whether that means it's actually working as well as an NSAID I can't say.  The NSAIDS never increased joint flexibility for me, just reduced my pain levels from almost-unbearable to manageable. 

I tried adding more legumes to my diet, but that really didn't work for me--made the ME/CFS brain fog and exhaustion flares worse, and made the daily joint pain worse.  Also added gut pain to the equation.  So, I've backed from 3 servings a week to 1-2.  I know from experience that whole grains do that to me, too.  I also tried adding oatmeal to my morning routine, but according to my blood work, that was also a no-go: it took my blood sugar from the normal range into the pre-diabetic range. 

I tried going for easy walks (shopping) more than once a week.  That triggers ME/CFS flares badly enough I can't get anything else done, so that's yet another no-go.  

I have also started doing yoga again, for 5 minutes, 2x per day.  My right knee, in particular, doesn't like one of the poses I use, and my hands don't like two of them; however, it's just pain, not increasing damage, so I'm ignoring it.  It isn't triggering ME/CFS flares, so I'm cautiously hopeful that it won't if I'm careful.  It should build muscle mass which should help burn fat mass and help both support the lower inflamed joints and reduce pressure on them. 

Hopefully, what I'm doing that's working for me will help reduce the inflammation...and the cholesterol, which the doctor is really panicking over, even if I think she shouldn't.  Hopefully, it will eventually reduce pain levels, and maybe even my blood pressure with it. 

Busy week, and I'm tired and fried

And sore.  We've had some really weird weather patterns, this week.  It was actually in the 60's for a lot of the week (M-W), then the temperature fell like a rock.  Thursday and Friday were cold and rainy (not freezing rain, thank God, even if that was a possibility).  And I had doctors' appointments both days--Thursday was a follow-up with the cardiologist (more on that in a bit), and Friday with my GP, so I was out in the rainy cold...which didn't do my joints any good.  Not fun at all. 

Less fun was what last night did: the temperature went up overnight, from 36 degrees at sunset to 51 overnight.  And then dropped again.  Right now, it's 39 degrees, and it's been warming back up for a while.  Yeah, it's doing what you'd think it'd be doing.  I'm huddling under a heat blanket with compression gloves on. 

So, Monday and Tuesday...we'd gone to my mom's, so I felt like crap and didn't get much done.  I made up for it Wednesday, and paid for it, hard, Wednesday night.  I got both the hall bathroom cleaned, and the utility room (including sweeping out the dog's corner around her kennel).  Joints weren't hurting too bad, and breaks between steps in my chores made it possible.  As well as help from the pixie after I got them picked up from school.

Thursday, I found out I had an extra stop that had to be made over and above the doc's appointment: we were entirely out of bread after I made lunch for the imp to take to school, and the kids both wanted sandwiches for Friday's lunch.  Since I was meeting Odysseus at Sam's Club around 10:00 anyway (there's a veritable rabbit warren of doctors' offices on a loop around the hospital, and it's confusing, and trying to find the right place in an unfamiliar area would have been panic-attack inducing for me), I stopped in and grabbed the bread. 

Doc's appointment went fine...I thought.  I don't need a cardiologist, and was planning to just...not go back.  Went for lunch with Odysseus, got home, crawled under my blanket for a while, then went and got the kids.  Got them about halfway through homework...and then the cardiologist's office called.  They wanted me to come back in, because the doctor wasn't paying attention to the chart.  And he wanted to discuss something with me (probably my weight and my blood pressure).  Um...gotta put that off for a while because I'm not capable of driving myself to that appointment.  I need to figure out a day and time when Odysseus can help me with it again (and maybe do lunch again). 

Friday.  Yesterday.  I was already feeling fucking awful after the rest of the week, and had a doctor's appointment.  And it took about three minutes for my alarm to wake me, so I was behind the eight ball from the get-go.  Running late.  And no time for coffee. 

Got to the doc's office, and got my concerns and thoughts dealt with...and got a prescription for a water pill/blood pressure med.  One specific to reverse high blood pressure caused by steroids...and estrogen-based meds.  I'll have labs done with that office at the end of the month to make sure I'm not too low on certain minerals, and a follow-up at the end of next month to see if a) it's working, b) the dosage is right, and c) if I even need to still be on it (yes, it's already making a difference for me). 

Then, since the office had gotten me in early (and out early), I went to Walmart.  And got the things I needed from there.  And went home and collapsed until I had to get up and eat. 

And then, last night, Mother Nature forgot her lithium, and maybe had a hot flash overnight.  I hope the bitch is as miserable as she made me. 

So yeah.  Tired and fried.  Not planning on doing much today because of it.

Sad.

One of my favorite lyricists and best drummers of all time passed away yesterday, after a long fight with brain cancer.  He'd lasted much, much longer than most do with that particular form of it, but the cancer still won in the end.

Raise a glass for Neil Peart tonight.

Here's one of my all-time favorite songs...a song that he wrote most of the lyrics for.

Stuck in my head, tonight

Reflections and resolutions

Last year...

Most of it was overshadowed by one big, bad event, and the fallout thereof.  It was both bad, sad, and good, all at once.  But one thing it was, was heavily stressful. 

This new year...

1. I'm going to be working harder on trying to build routines.  Last year, I had some (small) success, to the point I wasn't living in CHAOS* as much as I always have.  But then, I got hit with a series of health attacks, then Christmas's new issues...yeah.  The house got to looking like it'd had a tornado go through the insides.  I need to get the cleaning routines down to nothing but maintenance.  For me and for the kids. 

2. I'm going to start journaling daily again.  It's a massive stress-buster for me.  And the less stress I'm under, the less my own body attacks me.  I really didn't do enough of it last year.  I can see that, now, in hindsight. 

3. I'm going to be changing up some of my standard health routines.  I can't really add exercise, and if I cut calories further, I'll be into starvation diet levels, so I'm not going to worry about my weight.  There is, literally, nothing I can do about it, given my restrictions.  I can, however, try changing up what I eat, and I will try that.**  I can, and will be, cutting sugar out as much as possible, given that it's an inflammatory food substance, and I can't take NSAIDs any more.  And as I'm now over 40, I need to get off of the oral contraceptives for my health's sake.  

4. I'm going to get the kids involved in, and responsible for, the massive amount of paper they bring home from school.  I'm going to teach them how to sort and file stuff.  It's something I didn't learn, and am learning as I go for household paperwork.  I'm not finding it easy, and I'd like to shove the school papers off on the kids to make less for me to work with. 

5. I'm going to write every day.  Something I let slide starting in July of last year.  I think that's probably added to my stress levels, too, but whatever.  I'm going to start writing every day, even if it's just a few hundred words.

6. I'm going to set the laptop down early and read every day.  Paper books.  I've got a lot that I haven't read that I want to, and my brain's finally coming back online with the natural thyroid replacement, in ways it didn't with the synthetic therapies.  And there's a lot of books that the kids are interested in, that I haven't read, and don't know whether they're appropriate or not. 

7.  I'm going to read the Little House books to the kids.  They got a set to share for Christmas, and I started reading the first one to them.  They love them. 

Overall, nothing really huge.  Just...little things, that won't be too hard to implement.  I hope.

*CHAOS: Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome.  From The FlyLady.  

**Less a diet and more guidelines of things I need to start eating more of...which means less of other things.  I'll be following the guidelines set out by the MIND diet...but not using margarine, and not reducing my beef intake. 

What an awful fap that was...

So.  I woke up at 4:30 Christmas morning with what I thought was an earache below my left ear, radiating down my neck, just behind my jaw.  I flopped a pillow over the affected ear, and tried to go back to sleep.  Got up and took an aspirin at 5:00.  And ended up with a cascade of other symptoms hitting, one after the other. 

Kids got up at 6:30-ish, like a school morning.  And they opened presents.  It was a lot of fun to watch, but I kept feeling worse and worse as it went on. 

I asked to be taken to the ED around 7:30 or 8:00.  The last time I requested that was when my water broke eight weeks early with the imp.  But...with the symptoms I was having, I wasn't sure it wasn't an emergency.

I wound up spending Christmas in the hospital, with blood drawn frequently (and not from the I.V. port already in place...no, these were from new sticks.  Lots of other tests run, and me run all over the hospital for said tests.  And nothing by mouth until 4:30 or 5:00 p.m.  By that time, I was ready to bite someone for a drink of water.  My usual water intake is between a half a gallon and a gallon of water per day, and I had had...less than a cup by that point.  And I was going mildly nuts with thirst.

I came home yesterday before noon, with sticky patches all over the place, a bruise the size of a fifty cent piece inside my left elbow, and bruising all around the top of my right arm (those hospital blood pressure cuffs are vicious), and a new diagnosis of GERD, a new prescription for six weeks of a proton pump inhibitor...and orders to stop taking aspirin from one doctor, and orders to take a baby aspirin from another doctor.  I also came home with a doctor's orders to get a blood pressure monitor for at home, and check it twice a day, and take the record with me when I went to see my doc in three weeks.  (It's already a lot lower than it was in the hospital...and trending downward.)

I am feeling much better today than I was even yesterday, and I was feeling much better yesterday than I had been the day before.  But I am not going to do anything I don't absolutely have to, and am planning on simply reading a book for the rest of the day.  Odysseus suggested David Weber's In Fury Born...I started it day before yesterday, and I'm greatly enjoying it.  And I'm incredibly thankful it's a very long book, and that it was on one of the Baen free CDs they were putting in the hardbacks years back.  Because, while we have the hardback, it really is a long book, and kinda heavier than I could probably have managed day before yesterday. 

He is Born!

Halford - Oh Come O Come Emanuel

OH, FFS!!!

No grounds.

The Democrats have no grounds to impeach President Trump.  The Republicans that hate his fucking guts know that.  They also know that he's a vindictive son of a bitch, and did not vote in favor when the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives decided to dive face-first into the manure pile for a mud-wrestling* session.

Abuse of power?  Obama did that.  Bush II did that.  Clinton did that.  Bush I did that.  I don't remember Regan, considering I was a pre-teen when he left office, so I can't say one way or the other.  If simple "abuse of power" was an impeachable offense, every president for the last 200 years (with very few exceptions) should have been impeached.

This opens up #10 cans of worms the Democrats really don't want opened, in ways they really don't want those cans opened.

I do not like President Trump.  I do, however, respect the fuck out of him, and I do respect the job he's taken on, trying to clean out the Aegean Stables.  He's making decent progress, too.

Hence, this stupidity.

Dear God, they know not what they have wrought.  


*Mark Twain comes to mind.  Also pigeons and chess. 

The end of an era

For the past several years, I've been clipping those Box Tops for Education from all of the products that have them.  I'd pack them into a sandwich bag until I couldn't fit any more in, and send them with alternating kids.  One year, I had a new bag filled every month.  That was a lot of box tops, and the kids' classrooms benefited.  

I gathered up the last few box tops this morning, put them in a bag, and sent them with the pixie. 

That's it.  There are no more, and there will be no more. 

Not because the program has ended, but because it has...changed. 

I noted, recently, that things that had had the little pink square on them (or two, three, four, or more), were...harder to find.  There were fewer products with that little pink square.  I think Kleenex was one of the first brands to stop putting it on the packaging.  Time was, I could get a big package of boxes of Kleenex from Sam's Club, and cut a dozen box tops off of the plastic packaging. 

They've disappeared from the Motts Apple Juice, the Progresso soup cans, and now the Old El Paso canned goods.  They've disappeared from a lot of cereal boxes, and from the brownie mixes I get. 

Note well: many of these brands haven't necessarily stopped participating. 

The box tops organization changed things up.  Now, instead of taking the box tops off the individual products and sending those to your teacher...

...you download an app, and scan your store receipt. 

Uh, no. 

For several reasons, no. 

First reason: you need a smartphone to participate.  I do not have, nor do I want a smartphone.  I have a flip phone with a camera.  It's as much as I need, and I have that only very grudgingly.  I hate cell phones with a purple passion...the only reason I have one at all is that I drive, and have the kids in the car with me most of the time.  It's a safety device. 

Second reason: while I shop with Amazon (which tracks my purchases) and shop at Sam's Club (membership...does the same thing), I am not in favor of having all of my spending tracked by whomever wants to track it.  I do not see how it's anyone's business what I purchase and when.  And, by forcing us to scan receipts, that's exactly what this stupid program has moved to doing.  If it was scanning the individual things that participate in the box top program, it would be different. 

Third reason: there's no way this program has a database secure enough that it won't be hacked.  There's no way the spending habits of millions of people won't be used by the unscrupulous.  Which includes the governments of cities, states, and nations.  Assuming they wouldn't be automatically granted access from the get-go. 

I had been spending the little bit more to get Kleenex brand tissues--something like $5 more per 12 boxes than the Member's Mark generics that I like just as well from Sam's Club.  That has changed.  Same with spending a few cents more per can for enchilada sauce, or taco seasoning.  Beans, refried beans, and brownies will just be made from scratch (lot cheaper than buying pre-prepared). 

And a direct donation to the classrooms can and will be made instead. 

Convince me I'm wrong.

Convince me that letting your kid go to public school isn't implicit or explicit abuse.  Convince me that there are still arguments in favor of public education still being allowed to exist.  Convince me that "socialization" is more important than building a foundation of knowledge and understanding for a later development of critical thinking.

Oh, wait...

You can't.

Today, the neighbor's grandkid hustled up at 8:30 a.m. to see if my kids could go out to play.  When I asked him if he was aware of what day of the week it was, he got an utterly blank look cross his face, and he stuttered, "but...but...Thanksgiving Break!" 

My kids are in private school because of shit like this: the kid gets half days every fucking Friday, and full days off three or four times a month.  There's no emphasis on spelling or on math.  The kid doesn't know history, and barely started learning science my pixie learned last year (in 2nd grade, and this kid's in 4th or 5th grade).  So.  What are they learning?  Just...social justice and brainwashing.  I don't think he reads on a 2nd grade level, either. 

And...he's not stupid.  He's actually pretty damn bright and creative.  BUT. 

That school system is geared below what I consider the minimum (my own education--he's behind where I was in the same grade in an utterly shit rural district).  I'd blame Common Core, but Joplin schools were already bad.  Common Core has simply exacerbated an already existing problem. 

And the area "good district?" 

Well. 

Clearly, the middle school has been used as a pedophile grooming station for a while.  At the very least, this school year.  Someone was reported as having inappropriate sexual contact with their middle school students.  One--only one, but there's likely more--came forward.  The event happened last Tuesday.  The district called him into the office on Friday to allow the city police to arrest him. 

Not Tuesday, the day it was reported.  Not the next day after surveillance camera footage was reviewed. 

Friday. 

When socialization in public school districts starts Lord of the Flies style and devolves from there (and it does), when kids are warehoused rather than actually educated, when they're groomed for sexual exploitation...you cannot convince me that letting your kid attend public school is any less than negligence. 

And, anymore, the case can easily be made for outright abuse. 

Bad start to the week.

Last weekend was wonderful: the weather was beautiful (in the 60's on Saturday, and approaching 70 on Sunday).  I had some warning that all was not well on Sunday, considering I woke up whining in discomfort (and I don't whine), and it didn't get better all day.  But the weather was gorgeous.

And then...

Then.

The warmest it got on Monday was at midnight.  Then around two or three, the oncoming weather system hit, and the temperature started dropping.  And dropping.  And then it started sleeting and snowing while the temperature kept dropping. 

I'm thankful that the two days of really nice weather meant that the half to 3/4 inch of ice and snow we got didn't stick, but...this morning when I woke up, I still checked email to see if the kids had school or not.  (They did.)  Because it was forecast to have gotten down to 14 degrees this morning.  (It was actually 11 degrees when I got up at 6:30, according to the weather report--it's usually a few degrees colder here.)

The fireplace heater and space heaters in the bedrooms almost managed to keep up overnight, but not quite.  Yeah, the heat pump kicked on, and that means the emergency heating elements had to be used.  I'll see what I can do today to keep it from happening again. 

I did a lot  of baking last night.  Supper tonight is going to be made in the oven--I'm making tortellini pasta bake.  I use the dried tortellini you can buy in the pasta aisle at Walmart--usually get the spinach and cheese, because it sneaks extra veggies into the imp, who doesn't like most veggies.*  It's like normal pasta bake, but bakes longer--about ten minutes longer before you pull it out and add the cheese.

Tomorrow's supposed to be back up to 40. 

In the meantime, we're waiting on the plumber to get back to us--our sump pump went out last week, and we found out on Friday that that was installed all the way wrong, too--wrong pump, wrong kind of pump, and not hooked up correctly to either power or the drainage.  I got a quote, and it's doable.  Not comfortable, but doable.  He just didn't have what he needed to get it fixed Friday, and didn't know when he'd have the time in his schedule to get back out here to us. 

He did leave us with a loaner pump.

But yeah, Odysseus is right--they're probably swamped with emergency calls from people that didn't take precautions against frozen pipes last night.  I'll count myself lucky if I hear from them by tomorrow. 

Oops.

Note to self: don't do a double-batch of beef stroganoff in the instant pot, then let the pressure off fast.

Last night, I made a big batch of beef stroganoff.  I'd asked my mother-in-law over, but she forgot, so I've got a lot of leftovers of the meat and sauce without noodles (makes an incredibly good gravy over a baked potato--yum). 

I'd decided to make it last month--and I decided yesterday morning to make it in my instant pot.  Because stew meat cooked in that turns out utterly perfect. 

So, I dumped in about 2 lbs of stew meat, 2 cans of mushroom soup, about a third of a pound of sliced mushrooms, a chopped onion, and a cup and a half of beef bone broth, and a couple of sprinkles of Knorr beef bouillon for a little extra flavor.  And then I thought about it, and set it to soup/stew, and left it running for half an hour.

When it was done, I turned the valve for quick release.

That...was a mistake.

It made a HUMONGOUS mess.  Sprayed stroganoff sauce through the pressure relief valve, and splattered the cabinet doors, the counter, the back side of the pressure cooker, the lid, the handle--the only reason nothing else got by mushroom soup and beef broth was because nothing else was close enough. 

And thankfully, the sauce was thick enough that it didn't hit the ceiling. 

So, yeah.  Sauce was thick enough I don't have a bigger mess to clean up than I could manage without help.  Still thinner than I wanted, and adding only sour cream/Greek yogurt would thin it even more.  So...I adapted.  I halved the amount of sour cream, and substituted in half a brick of cream cheese. 

It turned out utterly delicious, and even the imp liked it (the pixie liked the noodles, but wasn't happy with the rest of it).  It's going on the regular meal rotation for during the winter. 

But I do need to remember--next time, let the pressure come off naturally. 

I'm pretty sure that cleaning up that giant mess is going to etch that into my memory. 

Planning ahead

As y'all know, I've been using the FlyLady's system for keeping house.*  I've been kind of using it, bits and pieces, on and off, for a few years.  Well, this past year, I really got stuck into it.  She has a habit a month she wants people to get used to, and get started using in their own lives.  November's...is menu planning.

I've been working on this for several years, now.  And it helps.  Not just with the grocery budget (and saving for tuition), but with my energy, both physical and mental. 

I have to admit, it's a lot easier to do in the winter--it's not so hot I don't want to cook.  I don't have to check to see how hot it will be in the coming week before I plan meals around prep method and daily high temperatures.

Sunday suppers are usually my make-a-lot-of-leftovers meals: usually chili or tacos, during cold weather.  And then those leftovers become lunches pre-packed for Odysseus to have during the work week.  If there's not enough for the whole week, I'll plan a pasta night (pasta bake makes another couple of lunches).  Sometimes on weekends, I'll make soup or stew, as well, and that's my lunches for several days (or, in the case of some soups which do well frozen, lunch here and there for weeks). 

At the end of last month, I looked at the trending temperatures (chilly, and heading colder fast--we had SNOW before Halloween, and we're in SW MO, half an hour from Oklahoma!), and then I got the kids' November lunch menus.  And I sat down and planned all the meals for November.  It's not hard, and planning ahead like that means you DON'T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT what to fix when you're tired and fried from trying to keep house, write, and keep the kids focused on what they are supposed to be doing (homework, studying, etc). 

Thing is, it helps.  It helps with everything.  It curbs the kids whining about wanting to know what's for supper--they know they can just go look at the calendar, and either eat what I fix (most of the time) or fix something for themselves.   It helps with the grocery budget because I'm not buying a whole lot of stuff that I forget about that then goes bad before I fix it.**  It helps us resist the impulse to eat out...or to eat junk.   It helps me know how much housework I can/should do before I start supper so that I have the energy left to actually make supper (and sometimes enough left after that to do a few more things that I put off to make sure I could cook).

Life is so much easier if you just plan what to fix for supper before it's time to actually start supper.  So much easier to just look at what's written on the calendar, as opposed to standing with the fridge hanging open, scratching your head and pulling a blank, while the kids are whining about being hungry.

*I heard a lot of "either do it right"--i.e., my way--"or not at all."  So I never learned how to keep stuff put up...or how to keep the house clean-ish.  Enough for company, at least.  I'm learning, and I'm at the point that some areas take minimal daily or weekly upkeep vs. massive efforts to get anything picked up.  

**I'm really bad about forgetting food...especially veggies, or stuff marked down for quick sale.  

Definitely Missouri--pronounced misery.

So.  We had rain from last Thursday until Saturday, and it never broke much past about 50 degrees any of those days.  Yesterday was 70 degrees, sunny, and gorgeous.  Today? 

Yeah. 

Fifty again, and cloudy.  With rain, at least, projected for most of the rest of the week.

Wednesday and Thursday we have possibilities of snow and sleet. 

I really hate this.  And it's compounded by last week's adventures.

So.  Wednesday morning, I woke up with symptoms of an infection.  I swung by my doctor's office and had them run a lab to confirm and send a prescription for antibiotics to Sam's Club's pharmacy.  And they did, but...the one they sent was one the pharmacy had down as one of the things I'm allergic to.  A sulfa drug.  Which my mother had told me I was allergic to. 

I do not remember an allergic reaction to this antibiotic.  I don't even remember any side effects at all, much less bothersome ones. 

And the pharmacy wouldn't fill it and hand it off to Odysseus when I asked him to pick it up.  I had to call the pharmacy and explain that my mom is allergic to it, and that Mom is notorious for confusing side effects and allergic reactions, and couldn't remember if I actually was or if it was just her.  So, I had to go get it myself, Thursday morning.  Feeling like I had the flu (common, for me, with infections). 

The pharmacist's only request was for me to wait on my first dose until my other half got off work so he could watch for problems. 

Also on Thursday of last week, we had parent-teacher conferences.  And, for the first time, we didn't have to drag the kids along, and leave them sitting in the hall.*   Which was a major plus. 

Friday, the pixie and I both had an appointment with the optometrist.  And I didn't have to drag the imp to that, either. 

By Friday night, after the third dose of antibiotics, the flu-feeling was starting to break up.  Yesterday, it was gone entirely...and then we had this weather system move in last night.  

Tylenol, aspirin, and an electric blanket are what I can use to deal with the pressure/temperature change induced discomfort...no liquid "painkiller" until probably Wednesday, since the antibiotic (which I'll be finishing Tuesday morning) says not to drink alcohol while taking it. 

And of what's available, the electric blanket and my yoga gloves seem to be the most effective. 

*My mother-in-law has, with the loss of my father-in-law at the end of June, moved from where they'd lived for fifteen or so years, an hour plus away, to twenty minutes away from us.  And she really likes living in town, and in this town in particular.  Especially since it lets her go eat lunch with the kids on a regular basis...or babysit. 

Choice is important

Most parents feel they do not have any choice about educating their sprogs.  But there are choices, and they do have their pros and cons. 

Public School

Let's start with public school.  Government funded and run education.  Most of my readers already know the cons: the teachers don't know the subjects they're supposed to teach; they indoctrinate rather than teach; there's no discipline in the classroom; the environment is chaotic, and bullies thrive on that; and smarter, more advanced students are, at best, ignored, and at worst sabotaged. 

Still.  That said.  There are still pros to public school.  They're few and getting fewer for parents of normal kids, but they are there.  And for parents of heavily disabled kids, they're a blessing.  First of all, due to several different sets of laws, public schools are required to bring in any kind of specialists needed to educate kids that are non-verbal through autism or other disability, kids who are bound to motorized wheelchairs through physical disability and need physical therapy as well as several interventions to allow them to acquire an education, and the speed better suits kids who just aren't as bright as normal.  Or kids who have difficulty with a home life that doesn't support fast learning (irresponsible parents who don't fucking feed their kids a decent--or any--breakfast is a big one).

Here's the biggest pro that makes most parents think that public school is their only choice: it's free.*

Private School

Next: private schools.  This choice can be broken down further by whether the school is secular or religious, and by duration (i.e., is it elementary, elementary and middle, or all the way?).  

First con: it's expensive.  How expensive can depend.  First, is it secular or religious?  Second, are there discounts, or scholarships, or financial aid that families can get?  Third, are their discounts for more than one child?

Our local secular school costs more than twice per year what the local university does per two semesters plus summer.  There are discounts for university professors' kids, but that still didn't put it into my family's reach.  I think they also had scholarships for need and for academics, but...they also, from what I noted, produced Greta Thunbergs that tended to wilt at the first sign that nobody was taking them seriously. 

We have several religious schools.  I can't speak to all of their cost schedules, because many of them are only K-3, or K-8, and I didn't investigate closely.  The Catholics have a K-12, and there's an evangelical protestant Pre-K3 through 12. 

The Catholic schools produce incredibly excellent students.  They coast through college, because they can.  They also cost quite a bit.  If you're Catholic, they charge less, but I'm not sure what they do for families having more than one kid in school at the same time.  If you're not Catholic, you pay the full amount, and I don't think there are discounts for siblings.  (It's been a few years since I investigated.) 

And the evangelical protestants...this is the school I put the kids in.  They do cost, and quite a bit, but less than either of the other full-duration options.  They cost about half again what a full year at the university does...but that's for both my sprogs, not just one of them, like the secular school.  There are discounts--parents pay full cost for the oldest, next oldest has a $500 discount, next one down has another $250 from the second kid's discount, and more than three?  The rest don't pay tuition.**  There are also hardship scholarships for families in a financial bind.  We had to take advantage of that one year.  They have payment plans where you can pay in one chunk (cheapest), two chunks (that one charges a little for processing both payments), or monthly during the school year (each payment includes a processing fee). 

 For the second con: bullying can be a problem.  However, unlike with public schools, the private schools' bullies tend toward the psychological: mocking the victim, or simply pointed exclusion.  Physical bullying is not tolerated.  And, if it gets to be too much, there's always another school or another option (see the last category). 

Third con: depending on the school, the curriculum is challenging.  The kids are working through the Abeka Books curriculum.  I, personally, really like the full curriculum.  It's fast paced, and isn't easy.  They blend similar concepts--especially in math, where they teach addition with subtraction, and multiplication with division.  They start with the broad strokes in history, then go back and add more and more details year by year.  Spelling is taught and tested from Kindergarten on, and cursive is taught starting in 1st grade.  I'd say about a third of my high school classmates would have been unable to keep up (the bottom third of my class).  There isn't a whole lot of support for disabled students, either--they brought in a speech therapist for my imp to get him up to speed when he was little, and they'll bring in occupational therapists on a part time basis, but the goal is to get the kid to not need them rather than support the child. 

As for the pros: in pretty much all private schools, the teachers are closely vetted for whether they're safe to be around children (as opposed to what you're seeing all the time in the news with teachers literally fucking the kids in public school), and they're also closely vetted for competence in both teaching and in their subject areas (unlike public school teachers that, when asked for help, tell the students to Google it because they don't know how, either).  Private schools use good curricula, not the frankly dumbed down and horrid Common Core (which public schools aren't even doing well with).  Class sizes are smaller--most people aren't willing to pay for what they think ought to be free, and that shows up best in class size. 

Best of all, the kids aren't crammed in a classroom with troublemakers that prevent them from learning.  Troublemakers are disciplined, and chronic troublemakers are expelled, unlike how public schools handle things.

However, there is a third option if your kid is being bullied past what they can deal with. 

Homeschool

This is the option I'd initially planned for before I even had kids. Yeah, I'd have to choose or create a curriculum and pay for the materials (and the curriculum), but it fit the budget a lot better.  Also, my experiences in teaching echoed this writer's.  I wanted to homeschool my kids because I wanted to give them every advantage and chance at success.

And then...then, my son refused to let me teach him or help him learn. Not anything. Nothing. He hid while he learned to crawl, pull up, walk, ride a tricycle, etc.  He simply will not learn when I am the teacher...or when his dad tries to teach him something...or his grandparents, or aunt. 

And then my daughter started wilting and only perking up when she was at the park with a lot of other kids.  She perked right up into a bubbly, happy little girl when we enrolled her in preschool, and only wilts during the summer, now. 

So. Both of my kids are in a private, religious PreK-3 through 12 just up the road from our house. And they're thriving, and a couple of years academic development ahead of their publicly educated peers. My daughter is about a year ahead of the neighbor's grandson...who's two grades ahead of her in public school.

Homeschooling is still an option if bullying becomes a problem. But right now, they're happy, and doing well enough. 

 

Funny thing is, there are politicians that would remove those choices.  There are places in the country where homeschooling is frowned on, heavily regulated, and parents risk jail if every i isn't dotted and every t crossed in the official paperwork required.  There are places where regulations placed on private school are so onerous that it prices it out of the reach of even the upper middle classes.  Places where, traditionally, school choice was supported by vouchers for students to attend the schools of their parents' choice (wildly successful in Washington, D.C., in particular) until the politicians demolished the program, dumping the poorest back into the worst districts.    

 

Choice is important.  Not every parent will choose wisely, but having the choices available is important.  Because not even every public school is equal.  

 

And this country was based on that right to choose: for families to choose which version of faith to follow (or none at all); for individuals to choose their own path, rather than have it pressed upon them by what class they were born into.   

Choosing your child's education is, perhaps, one of the most important choices a parent can have.  It's important that the choices be there, and not be regulated out of existence by pretentious snobs that want only their (substandard) children to have the advantage of a decent education. 

*Actually, it isn't free.  It's paid for out of property and other taxes.  State monies apportioned to specific public school districts come directly from that district's property taxes.  It's one of the main reasons why better, higher class income neighborhoods have better schools.  Well, one of the reasons, anyway.  There are others.  But all property taxes partially pay for the local school districts, whether you have kids or not, and whether your kids go to those schools or not.  Yes, that's theft.  No, there's not a lot we can do about it.

**When we were enrolling the kids initially, there was a family going through the formalities of getting their youngest school age kid started in the preschool class for the three year olds.  They already had four kids in older grades, and had two more too little for school.  There would be no way they'd be able to give all their kids the same school experience without that policy, and how do you choose?  Which kids do you leave out?  This family size may not be the norm over all the population, but larger families sort of are the norm at the school the kids attend.  

The homeless problem

It isn't recent. And it isn't just a lack of housing, or a lack of money for housing that makes it a problem. 

Actually, it wasn't nearly as much of a problem before the de-institutionalization movements in the '60s, which both halves of government (left and right) jumped on for different, short-sighted reasons. The left believed institutionalization of the severely mentally ill (schizophrenia, etc) was inhumane, especially when they were perfectly functional when they took their pills.*  The right looked at the monetary cost in tax dollar spending and flipped.**

More on that in a bit.

The homeless camps, worst on the west coast thanks to bleeding heart, utterly impractical leftists (but still bad on the east coast), are incredibly dangerous.  They're a pestilent, disease-ridden shit hole, bleeding out into civilization.  They're fecalized environments that aren't safe either for their denizens, nor for the functional, civilized individuals that are forced into contact with them. 

They also play host to the violent.  Sometimes, that violence is planned, sometimes it isn't.

The homeless camps, and the homeless within them--often feral, often incapable of function in society, often simply fucking useless and lazy--are a flat-out danger to the rest of us, both civilized and those of us who only pretend to be.***

One third of the homeless population are mentally ill to the point of inability to function in society.  To the point that they don't even see a need to try to function.  And why not, when they get all their base needs met by government programs designed to feed the homeless, funded by money stolen from taxpayers by a government that does not care about the taxpayers it's supposed to serve. 

Before the de-institutionalization movement, these people would have been housed.  They'd have been warm, fed, cared for.  Borderline functional.   Now? 

Now, they're the people on the street, mumbling to themselves and avoiding eye contact--if they're the non-violent types.  Or they're the types randomly attacking people because they see something pretty that they want...or because the voices in their heads tell them to bash the six year old on the sidewalk because it's Tuesday. 

Now, they're the ones dropping like flies in the heat, freezing to death in the cold.  Because there are no beds where they can be cared for long terms. 

Now, they're the ones spreading typhus, typhoid fever, leprosy, bubonic plague, and drug-resistant contagious infections like tuberculosis.  Granted, a few of those have been re-imported through our porous southern border, but the homeless camps are breeding grounds for the diseases.  Because they have no sanitation.  And because about a third of the people living in them have no clue why sanitation should even be a consideration. 

We, quite honestly, need--badly need--to bring back the asylums.  Even with the reputation of abuse and experimentation on the inmates (mostly false, but often enough true to smear all), we need to bring back the asylums. 

Because not all families are physically or emotionally capable of taking care of their relatives with mental/psychiatric impairment. 




*The problem is that the pills--which are only a treatment--work so well that those with the issue being treated think they're cured.  And. Stop. Taking. Them.  These people need a keeper that forces them to take their meds every damn day at the right fucking time.  And often, their families either can't or won't do that.  So they end up on the streets.  Where the family is willing and able to supervise their relative, I don't have an issue with the crazy not being warehoused.  However.  If/when that changes, the institutions should be available.  And aren't.

**Governments--local, state, and federal--spend a fuck-ton more on trying to serve the homeless than they ever did on the institutions, which kept so many of those who would have been homeless off the streets. 

***A lot people attacked do not see the danger coming at them until they're bleeding on the ground, or in the process of being raped.  Civilized to the point of being domesticated animals.  The rest of us simply are so wary of being prosecuted for protecting ourselves that sometimes we don't react in time to put the threat down. 

Musings upon parenting

I've recently been thinking about it a lot.  Parenting.  Whether I'm doing a good job at it. 

Truth is, I don't know.  I won't know until my children are adults. 

The proof is in whether or not they leave home.  I'm trying to give them all the skills they need to do exactly that.  I'm also trying my hardest to not cripple them. 

Currently, I'm trying to instill habits: study habits, household maintenance habits,* a work ethic...it's really hard, especially with really smart, strong willed children with cognitive abnormalities.** 

I will know I'm successful when they leave home, and have the skills to take care of themselves.

And that's take care of themselves.  Not take care of me.  Not take care of my siblings.  Take care of themselves.

I've got a whole host of examples of what not to do in pursuit of this.  I have the hardest part coming up: I have to let go.  I have to be willing to let them fail. 

Yes.  Exactly.

I have seen, recently, a teen repudiate parents who were trying to protect her.   Honestly?  I think the parents approached a lot of the issue in exactly the wrong manner for positive results, even if they were right. 

They are in the right by not allowing her to have "her" stuff.  Stuff that they bought for her.  She's denied her father and refused her name--in "public" on the book of faces.  Left the house with nothing but the clothes on her back, and the phone in her pocket.  No meds, nothing else she needed (her mistake).  Fine.  Her decision.  Her right. 

However, her parents have the right and responsibility to refuse to enable her in her stupidity. 

They do not have the right to cripple her with fear and guilt to keep baby right there under their wings, never to fly, but maybe to sing.  And they're not trying. 

Another family...ever hear of an enmeshed family?  It's codependence taken to a whole new level.  It's something that takes a healthy level of "selfishness" (i.e., self-preservation) to escape.  Yeah.  That's where I came from. 

When I managed to get out, I got out despite sabotage, tears, guilt trips, "but I worry about you because I love you!"  Among other mess.  At that time, my mother lived at the bottom of the driveway in a converted garage/machine shop, and my grandmother (suffering the mid-late stages of dementia) lived at the top of the driveway with an aunt that worked full time.  I did not have a photo ID, much less a drivers' license (and I was nineteen).  I managed to, in spite of the demands on me to help "take care of grandma," get the hell out, go to college, and meet my other half.  It was hard.  But I made it. 

Fast forward 21 years.  I'm still away.  My sister.  Isn't.  My grandma passed eleven years ago this coming Thanksgiving.  But now, that place is taken by my youngest aunt.  Who has brain-damage induced dementia, due to spousal abuse.  The other aunt?  Isn't just working full-time.  She's living with the middle aunt, who's got cancer.***

My aunt, the only one that worked full time, owns the property my mother still lives on.  She swears she's going to will it to my sister and one of our cousins.****

The result?  My sister is going crazy.  But.  Won't.  LEAVE.  Because "Isn't it the least I can do to help, since she's doing this for me?"

I...no.  Just...no. 

I've explained why I think this is a bad idea.  No, a BAD IDEA.  All caps. 

But they have her brainwashed and guilted into thinking that this is her duty. 

She has never left home.  She's never succeeded--she's been sabotaged, and worse.  Because where I was pushed and not permitted to give up by the woman who kept sabotaging me?  She learned.  She learned that, pushing me to get my high school diploma instead of letting me get out of school where the bullies tried frequently to get a reaction (they failed), she instead made it possible for me to find a way out. 

My sister?  Yeah, she let her be "homebound" with a district not willing to work with a homebound student.  She dropped out.  She never got her GED.  Yes, I have crippling social anxiety, too, but I managed.  I think she could, too, if our mother would push her into it. 

She has, after all, succeeded in driving.  But that's only because Mom pushed her because Mom has cataracts. 

I honestly do not think my family deserves to have my sister picking up all the slack and taking care of all of them.  They've failed her in a massively huge way. 

I quit enabling them long ago.  I do not give them money, I don't help them with bills.  I'll take food if they're that close to the edge, but...yeah.  I don't owe them anything, either, no matter the hinting, attempts at guilt trips, and wailing.  I just wish I could convince my sister that she's not helping them, and is only harming herself.  I wish I could convince her that they've failed her in almost every way possible. 

I really don't want to be that parent.  I don't want to be the parent that sabotages my kids in the name of keeping them my babies.  That's failure.  No, not on the kids' part. 

On mine.  As a parent.

So I push my kids.  They're in a damn good school that's moving at least two years faster than the better local public schools (and light years ahead of the bad ones).  I don't let them give up.  I don't let them half-ass the work.  They hate the homework, and they hate me for making them do it. 

But they'll have the advantage of having a habit of hard work when they get


*I never learned how to keep house.  It's only been recently that I've begun learning.  And I'm trying to teach the kids as I'm learning...which is really, really hard.  Especially while I'm still building my own habits.

**I don't count ADHD as a disability.  Nor even a handicap.  He's so very hyper-capable...of things he cares about.  The problem is the things he doesn't care about.  And in getting started on stuff he needs to do and wants to get done.  He's not, however, incapable.  

***Breast cancer.  And cancer in the lymph nodes behind her stomach.  Inoperable, that last.  And untreatable, because treatment will kill her with the state of health she's in.  So.  Really, it's sort of hospice.  

****Yeah, bad, bad, bad idea.  Sharing a property is a horrible idea, and is not going to work.  The way this is going to end up is with my sister homeless and helpless, after all is said and done--because she's got no options, and she's on SSI-Disability.  What's going to happen is that the place is going to have to be sold--at a massive loss, since there've been no repairs done for decades--and the money split...which is going to kick her cleanly off government assistance, with absolutely nothing to fall back on.